Friday, July 16, 2010

Cable Free

Yesterday I called DirecTV and told them I no longer wanted satellite TV.

DirecTV (which is a very fine company) lets you do anything online -- pay your bill, change your TV package, etc -- but if you want to discontinue service, you have to call. So I did.



I think satellite TV is great. But I decided it was time to be a bit more frugal and to go back to basics. I can listen to baseball games on the radio and broadcast TV has a variety of programming. Not like satellite but enough.



This is what my HD digital indoor TV antenna looks like. It can pull stations from towers up to 35 miles away. I get ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, PBS and a few other stations.



Last night instead of Larry King, I watched a bit of Magnum P.I. I admit the show is a bit dated but it was okay.



I am hoping this will force me to do some more reading when I am inside. Also, I can watch movies on my DVD player.

Of course the big test will come when college football starts up in a month!

10 comments:

Small City Scenes said...

Good for you. You can only watch one channel at a time so who needs a zillion of them. You can always watch the college games on network TV. I end up doing that instead of ESPN anyway.
I am glad you are back. I thought of you when I posted the haying pictures--you like the farming stuff. I think.
Stanwood Fair is coming up in 2 weeks and I am going to enter a couple of my photos. You are allowed only 2. So now I have to decide which two.
Anyway welcome back. MaryBeth

Anonymous said...

Yep, cable of any kind is expensive. Hubby deems it as being necessary though since it's what he loves doing most in the evenings.

Di
(Tom Selleck.... what a hunk!!)

Barbara said...

Good for you! I'll take Magnum PI over Larry King any day of the week.

I wish you could convince my husband to give up Direct TV! He watches baseball just about every day of the week. That is, when it's not football or hockey or basketball season...

Take the money you save and treat yourself to an iPad. I've become a big fan of my new lightweight library!

Jo said...

My cable and internet are from the same provider - Shaw. Shaw offered us free "ultra" high speed internet for a month, and I decided not to sign up because it was too expensive, and my "regular" high speed was fast enough. When they took the "ultra" high speed away, my regular high speed felt like a snail's pace. It turns out it actually is a bit slower than I had before.

I am very suspicious of cable companies. They need us more than we need them. They need to be nicer to us. But ... I have found myself spending more time away from my computer and my TV, so that's a good thing.

Maureen said...

I gave up TV altogether when it went digital, watch a lot of cable shows I missed on Netflix, and definitely don't mind not being deluged by the news.

Pauline said...

After a few weeks, TV withdrawl becomes painless and you wonder why you ever let it take up so much of your time. I'd been without TV for 20 odd years and now suddenly have cable. Doesn't matter though because I don't watch anything but my weather on the 8s if there's a storm brewing!

alady'slife said...

We took satellite and because of the trees, we received next to nothing in terms of stations so we changed back to cable.
It was fun while we had it though.

L. D. said...

We have watched so many old Magnum shows and still love them. It is great to jump back into time. I spend a lot of time on the create channel on pbs but it repeats so much I get irritated.

A Lady's Life said...

Ya satellite is great if you can get it With my trees I couldn;t get all the channels so its back to cable.
lol

Anonymous said...

I gave up the U-verse from AT&T. I have the high speed internet and that offers me all I need to build my beehives and learn about textile crafts and gardening along with the now and then home repair I need to be guided through. Now with the HD channels they offer three channels for every station - More than enough for my needs. I usually wind up following up on the internet for more knowledge when needed. My bank account is happy about the decision to drop the extra, un-needed TV channels. When our bank accounts are happy then we get to be happy. Patricia, Stockton, California